


Clever

by ariadne_bee



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Identity Issues, Post-Assassin Emotional Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-08 00:42:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1920231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadne_bee/pseuds/ariadne_bee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She had been so <em>clever</em> when she recreated herself as Mary Morstan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clever

She'd been stupid.

All that time, she'd been congratulating herself on being so _clever:_ she'd left it all behind, started fresh, created this new identity. And she'd thrown herself into being Mary Morstan, in a way that she'd never bothered with any of her previous personas. Why bother if you know you're just going to change it again in a few months?

But Mary, Mary Morstan was going to be for keeps. Even while she was still running under other names, Mary was on her mind. She'd got under her skin. She laid awake at night, on nights where the adrenaline was just running too high to let her crash into unconsciousness, and played out the details of Mary's childhood in her head. Soon it was bleeding out into her daily life; she'd tune into music playing in a shop and wonder, would Mary like this song? She'd stand in front of her closet and picture the clothes Mary would own. She'd find herself sitting aimlessly in front of her television, holding the remote and pondering what Mary would choose to watch. 

Mary was who she thought about when she needed to not be where she was, or do what she was doing, or have done what she had just done. It was almost necessary to think about Mary, who would do laundry on a sunny Saturday afternoon, and certainly not washing black silks in the bathroom sink in the middle of the night because while she was driving home, it suddenly hit her again who she had become, and she'd cried until she threw up. One day, one day, she would be someone else. She had been someone else, once, someone who did wrong things for the right reasons, and once she took care of the last practical details, she could be someone else again. Not just in name, this time.

And then, finally, all the pieces were in place, and she slid into Mary's skin effortlessly. She looked in the mirror, and smiled at Mary's reflection, and thrilled to see herself there. This was what she'd worked so hard to get to: a new life, a new person, a new future that left everything that she was behind.

She hadn't expected to meet John. The realization that she was falling for him rocked her to the core; she had never allowed herself that kind of luxury. To love. To be loved. It would have been a weakness, a fault line, a vulnerability that she could not allow herself.

Mary smiled, and when John leaned in to kiss her, she closed her eyes and kissed him back.

Mary. Mary was kind, and funny, and charming. Mary was sociable, and openly affectionate with her friends and her boyfriend; everyone she knew fondly described her as "sweet" or "adorable" or "darling." John called her Mary, and from his lips, it was the most intimate endearment she could imagine. 

And day by day, she thought less and less about having been anyone other than Mary, until it almost seemed like that life had been a strange and long-ago dream. 

She hadn't expected Sherlock to return from the dead, interrupting John's proposal and bringing a whole new world of complications into her lovely, happy domesticity. But that was all right.

She studied Sherlock, tore apart John's reactions to him, assessed every minor detail. Mary told herself it was because she loved her boyfriend-nearly-fiance very much and wanted to see him happy. And then she realized that Sherlock was not a rival, not someone she needed to protect John from: he was an ally. He was there to protect John from all the horrors of the world, just as she was. 

She was intimately familiar with those horrors, having been one herself. She kept Sherlock close, giving him no reason to look too closely at her with those too-focused eyes, and found her genuine affection for him a happy coincidence. It was a rush to realize that she'd even deceived the great Sherlock Holmes, who would never be able to see that Mary had ever, ever been anyone but who she was. Because Sherlock saw her as someone that John loved, and that was all he needed to know. 

They became a little family, of sorts. It wasn't exactly as she'd pictured it, back before she was Mary Morstan, but it didn't matter. She was happy, for the first time she could remember. She could be herself. Loved.

And then those initials interfered – C.A.M. – and she saw how her whole life was going to crumble before her eyes, like it was all made of dust and blowing away. 

She would do anything, anything, to stay Mary.

She had always been so careful, never letting anything bleed into Mary's world. Now she was living in two skins at once, feeling like she was being torn into pieces. She was still Mary, kind, funny, charming; but she had to be herself again, too, forcing her brain to accept that she used to be someone else, something else, and that she had to wear that life again.

It would just be for a little while. Just such a little while, and she could go back to being Mary again, forever, Mary Watson. And while Mary was clever, _she_ was even cleverer than Mary, and _she_ was going to clean up the mess she'd left. And then she'd be done.

She would fix this. Even when it kept going wrong, wrong, wrong, she could only think: Mary. The one word symbolized everything she had, everything that she was turning herself inside out to keep. She just had to keep going. Sherlock would forgive her, or at least he would not tell John, and she wasn't sure if she was threatening him or begging him, or if they were the same thing. But it would work, she would fix this, even if she lost Sherlock, she would still have John, she could still be Mary –

Then she'd seen Sherlock's eyes, regret and heartbreak written in his pupils as he focused over her shoulder, and she'd turned and there was John.

And she realized that she hadn't been clever at all.

 

She'd been a fool, thinking that if she held up a charade long enough, it would become real. She was still the self that she hated, that nauseated her. And the look in John's eyes as he pulled the straight-backed chair even with the fireplace, and ground out the word "client" between his teeth - if she could have despised herself any more, at that moment, she would have. 

That night she laid awake in the dark, staring at the ceiling and reliving all of her horrors. Every bullet, from the first one she'd ever fired to the one she'd put into Sherlock. The silent taxi ride back to Baker Street tonight, when she'd kept her head down and tried not to let her knees bump into either John's or Sherlock's as her mind raced, desperate to find some way to convince John to forgive her. Then the silent taxi ride home, alone; John following the ambulance to the hospital, following Sherlock, as always.

But she was still, in some way, Mary, maybe even still Mary Watson. Wasn't she? She shifted in bed. She wasn't pregnant enough to feel it, not really, but it was impossible to be comfortable. Pregnant. More visions flooded her mind, future horrors this time – if she lost John, if she lost _Mary,_ how could she have this child? How could she even carry this child to term? She pushed her palm against her belly and forced her mind still. Shut everything down the way she had done so many times, shame roiling in her stomach. Lying in the dark, lying to herself. Mary.

There was a spark growing inside her, something tangible between them. He couldn't push that away, no matter how horrible she was, no matter how utterly hateful she was, a liar and a killer and a betrayer of trust. There would be a baby, Mary's child, John and Mary's child, and he would love the baby and he would love her. John would forgive her, he would have to forgive her. 

Mary would be the perfect mother. She closed her eyes, palm still on her belly, and pictured it. Mary would have cute maternity outfits, and the girls at the clinic would fuss over her and throw her a little baby shower. She would go to all her prenatal appointments, and maybe even keep a little pregnancy journal – that was something Mary would do, a little book with sweet and funny thoughts that her child could read later on and see how much mama loved him or her, even before they were born.

And John would be there when the baby was born, his whole face smiling like the sun when they handed him the tiny thing to hold, swaddled in blankets. She could even picture the first time they handed the baby to Sherlock to hold. He would be awkward, but smiling, and John would be radiant. Mary's heart swelled with affection for Sherlock, for John, for the baby that she could see in her mind. 

Mary would be a good mother, she would, she _would._ She would work this out. She would figure out the right thing to do to fix this, to make things back the way they were, before the wedding, when Mary's life was John and Sherlock and wedding planning and going out for coffee with Janine and flirting with John at the surgery and not this gaping black hole of nothingness at her core. 

She didn't deserve it, she knew, the life that she'd misappropriated, that she'd lied and stolen and nearly killed to protect. She deserved to rot in a jail cell until she withered away – she wasn't even owed the mercy of a quick death. She knew that she was corrupted, broken, shredded black putrefaction inside. And it didn't matter how much she hated herself for it, punished herself for it, because there was only one way to escape the constant feeling of screaming in her head.

Mary. Mary Watson could have that life. Deserved it, even. Mary had always been a good friend, and a good wife; Mary would be a good mother. Mary would fix it all.

She'd been stupid, but she would never be so careless again. 

Mary would just have to be very, _very_ clever.


End file.
